


proof that a solid friendship can be maintained despite radically different interests in cinematography

by uumiho



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Asexual Character, Drone Season, M/M, Trollstuck, excessive videogaming, mild sexual themes, past John♠Vriska
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:30:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2440265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumiho/pseuds/uumiho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What kind of troll approaches Drone Season by advertising for an anonymous, sex-free pail-filling session online? The same kind of troll who tries to befriend their anonymous donor afterward, apparently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	proof that a solid friendship can be maintained despite radically different interests in cinematography

**Author's Note:**

> This is (another) gift for my stupid beta reader that was not read by them previous to posting so excuse my life. They were pretty bummed that most asexual character fics featured sex taking place, and while I fully respect any ace's decision to do the do, I kind of agreed with them. So, in consolation, I wrote this.
> 
> I am not especially confident with writing John's voice but I guess that's what I've been doing lately. :T

The echoing slosh of liquid into hollow metal is unpleasant and obscene. You remove your fingers from your nook with a grim sense of revulsion that you try your best to mask. It’s done now—you don’t need to get upset about it. It’s over. There’s no point.

You can hear nervous shuffling on the other side of the wall. You’d decided, you being higherblooded, that it was safer to do this at his hive, since traveling might be dangerous for him. The unfamiliarity of the block doesn’t ease you at all, doesn’t give you any source of solace from the gross, soggy feeling between your thighs.

Fuck’s sake, it’s all the way down to your _knees_. Tiny flecks of blue stain the bottom of your white shirt from where they’ve ricocheted out of the bucket.

Why buckets, even? Why did your stupid-dumb species never think to make this a _comfortable_ process?

“Egbert?” comes a raspy voice from the other side of the wall. It’s higher than you expected based on the bold, commanding way he types. It’s oddly fitting, though, and any other time you’d be laughing at it.

“Don’t come in,” you respond immediately, casting about for a terrycloth absorbency tarp. At least, you think that’s what lowbloods call them. Your lusus always referred to the things as towels, but you’re trying to be as respectful as possible while in a stranger’s hive. When you made the arrangement a perigee and a half ago, that’s when you’d started grilling yourself on lowblood vernacular, so you didn’t make a pompous ass out of yourself when you finally met him in person.

“What’re you doing?” he asks, exasperated, though you can hear the shake of nerves. Finding nothing else useful you whip off your shirt—it’s already tainted, anyway—and use it to wipe off your legs. You wiggle into your pants instead of answering, figuring you should wash before you inflict your still-copious amounts of genetic residue on the only underwear you thought to bring. “Please tell me you’re not trying to recreate the entirety of Troll Kama Sutra by yourself in my hivestem.”

You open the door, already saying, “Geez, you’re lucky I was done. This much complaining would have made it crawl back up and never come out.” There is no remorse in your stomach when you shove the mostly-empty bucket at him; you’re glad to have the visceral blue sheen out of your sight.

He rolls his eyes magnificently. “Oh my God, fuck you.” He turns on his heel, your bucket clutched protectively in his arms, and stomps over to the elevation slab on which another bucket is sitting. You look away, cringing as that horrible, squishy-sloshy sound hits your ears again while he pours your genetic material into the bucket with his. When you look back the bucket is still tipped up, and the kid is giving it a few good shakes to get every last drop out. It makes your bilesac churn unpleasantly.

Really, it is extremely fucking unfair that you have to go through all of this in order to meet your species’ procreation mandate. You can’t imagine pulling one over on the drones will be this easy, by relative definitions of ‘easy,’ when you have to leave the planet next sweep.

You suppose you’d been panicked a bit when your kismesis left you three perigees ago, just before your first official contribution was due. Your reluctance to engage in concupiscent tomfoolery had, unfortunately, driven her away. It wasn’t _just_ about the drones, she’d said. She didn’t want to jerk off into a bucket like some desperate creep, she actually wanted to _fuck_ you!!!!!!!!

That last part made you miss her a little less, you think.

At least you can go home soon. “Thanks,” you say awkwardly, watching him finally achieve satisfaction with the amount of your bodily fluids that have mixed with his, moving to set the bucket on the table. He wraps his hands carefully around the other one (about one third full, you estimate) and captchalogues it as lovingly as you’ve ever seen someone captchalogue a thing.

He grunts, hauling your used bucket (urgh) off the table and thumping down the hall with it. After a second, you hear water. That sounds like a really nice thing right now, _water_ , so you follow him. He got dressed even faster than you did—you’re wandering around without a shirt or shoes, but he’s _fully clothed_. It’s weird.

You watch as he purges the last of the blue slime from the inside of the pail, letting the water run over it without touching it with his hands. A little bit of relief takes the opportunity to seep into your bones—he kept to the plan. Didn’t try anything, didn’t argue. Just showed you what block you could use and then disappeared to do his own thing—much faster than you, you note, but it was a very painless encounter as things go.

“Can I use your showe- eeerrr, your ablution trap?”  
  
He gives you the stink eye. You can see a bit of red bleeding through the darkness of his iris. It looks sorta different from your other rust-blooded friend, but you don’t really have the opportunity to study it or find it weird before he flicks his eyes over to the trap beside him. “Yeah, sure, knock yourself out,” he says.

This is only the first time you have to do this. You’ll be staying a couple nights to give your bodies time to recover and then doing it again, which should give you enough material to appease the drones. Most couples fill their buckets a few times so they’re nice and full, but you’re a highblood so the drones should accept your meeting the minimum contribution requirement. Hopefully your being there will help your little buddy not get culled for having the audacity to make such a meagre offering. It strikes you as a bit absurd, because you’d think the Empress wouldn’t _care_ about less material coming from lowbloods, them being so deplorable and whatever, but you guess there’s a status quo to be maintained and that requires a lot of bodies to oppress.

Or so Vriska said, anyway, though she’d had a distinct lack of sympathy in her tone. You thought it was kind of shit, actually.

God, you hope he doesn’t make you sleep in that room. You didn’t see a recuperacoon in there, so maybe there’s somewhere else for you to stay. You’ll ask him later, after you’ve showered.

The kid—he’s kind of scrawny and small, not someone you think you’d go for if pailing was actually a concern for you—elbows past you and slams the door without another word, leaving you alone to your ablutions. The first thing you do is turn on the sink, just to make sure the rest of your business is purified from the vicinity. Immediately following, you strip off your pants and turn on the overhead faucet, not waiting for the temperature to adjust in either direction before you plunge under it, quickly bending to scrub every hint of blue from the grey of your skin. You don’t use one of the exfoliation patches he has in his trap; you feel that’d be rude.

* * *

You’re wearing your underwear again when you abandon the ablution block, damp but content. The rustblood is nowhere to be seen, so you pad around looking for him. You run into his lusus, which kind of… screes at you. You flinch, make searching hand gestures, and eventually manage to communicate that you’re looking for the house’s resident and have no actual desire to hurt him or his giant, looming crab monster. Compared to your own lusus, this one produces a completely different arrangement of sounds and responds to, apparently, a different dialect of wiggler clicks. Weird. You kind of thought those were universal.

Regardless, after identifying you as a non-threat, the crab points a claw down a hall. You thank him in regular Alternian, which is pretty stupid of you, and turn to follow his direction.

The kid is curled up on the couch, shoving handfuls of something crunchy into his mouth and staring intently at his computer screen. You’re a pretty quiet person and he doesn’t seem to notice you at first, until you step on the floor wrong and it creaks under your weight. You’re kind of a big guy, you guess. Way bigger than him, anyway.

He whirls around, eyes wide. His hand comes up to slam the husktop closed. You nod. “Hey.”  
  
“Oh,” he says, like he just remembered you were here. “Hi.”

“I was just wondering,” you begin, not trying to be subtle as you scan the room, “where you wanted me to sleep. I’m kind of tired.”  
  
“Oh,” he repeats, and then scrunches his brow like he hadn’t thought about it before you asked. “You could use that block where you, um, yeah,” he says.

Fuck no. “Can I sleep in here instead?” you ask, wincing.

He eyes you. “Why? What’s wrong with that block?”  
  
You shrug, not really wanting to go into much detail. “It’s just kind of weird, I guess.”

After several intense moments of studying you, he tilts his mouth and makes a vague gesture. “Yeah, whatever. I’m going to be awake for a few more hours, though. I don’t have a spare recuperacoon so you’re going to have to deal with a pile.”  
  
“I’ll just sleep on the couch,” you say.  
  
He goes back to giving you a speculative look but agrees easily enough, and drags his bowl of snacks with him as he scoots all the way to the end of the couch to make room for you. When you sit down he puts his spine against the arm of the couch, meaning you only see the back of his screen when he opens it back up. “What are you doing?” you ask, insistently curious.

The speculative look turns into a wonderful case of blatant scowling. “How is it even remotely your business.”

You smile a little bit. This guy’s so twitchy, it’s kind of funny. “It’s not, I just was wondering.”  
  
“Wonder on your own time,” he snaps, and then slumps down the arm of the couch, muttering under his breath as he begins typing rapidly. For several minutes he ignores you, and you think you could pop a book out of your sylladex, but you don’t really feel like reading. Mostly you wish you’d brought your computer, but you have this stupidly intense desktop set-up and never thought to get anything mobile. It’d be completely unwieldy to dismantle the whole thing just for a couple nights’ absence, so all you have is a small vintage palmhusk for old videogames. Your best friend gifted it to you for your wriggling day last sweep. You don’t know how he got the money for it, being a rust and all, but he sure came through. Comparatively, your gift to him was kind of stupid.

Most of the games you have you’ve already played though, and the portable game grubs are kind of hard to keep alive while you’re traveling, which really sucks because the vintage games are not easy to find anymore. You left your favourites at home, only taking a small travel box with a racing game, a shooter, and a puzzle game that you’ve never been able to beat because it’s so obscure that there are no guides for it online. You honestly wouldn’t mind if that one died.

You pop the palmhusk out of your sylladex and pick the stupid puzzle game, coaxing the little yellow grub into the port with some mild difficulty. The rustblood’s typing slows as he watches you fiddle the device in your annoyingly massive hands. This wasn’t a problem when you were smaller, but being a blueblood means you _grew_ , and fast. You’re way bigger than all of your other friends, which can be pretty uncomfortable sometimes.

Finally you get the grub to engage, and your palmhusk screen flickers to life. The kid’s eyebrows raise in a way that is completely unsubtle, because they’re bushy and thick and weirdly expressive. “Is that Fjoris: The Spunky Midblood Exploreliminator?”

You look at him. “Yeah, it is. Have you played it before?”

He flushes and hunches his shoulders, hiding most of his body from view behind his husktop. “Just once. My friend is kind of an obsessive collector, but he never puts his games away and just lets them crawl around his hive, so like the massive fuck-up he is, he stepped on it and wasn’t able to find a replacement. I got really far before that, though.”

Your lips spread into a grin and you gesture with the handheld, offering it to him. “I suck at this game!” you tell him, enthusiastic to have found something to get him to talk about. “I can’t get past the fifth stage, except for one time, but before I could save the game, my palmhusk died! I’ve never been able to figure out how I beat it since, so I usually just replay the first four when I get bored, heh.”

“What?” he barks. “The fifth stage was a piece of frosted spongy confectionary!” You stick your tongue out, because fucking no. No cake. Not even invoked in lowblood vernacular. “You should see stage seven. I bet it would make you weep.”

“I don’t doubt it,” you agree amiably. “It took me forever to get to the fifth stage in the first place, but maybe you’d like to play it with me? I bet I could use your help figuring it out.”

It seems that so much of what you say draws suspicious looks out of him—maybe that’s a lowblood thing, though? You don’t really know. You know your best bro has told you he has to be paranoid a lot, which kind of bums you out! You never really thought about it, though. He’s always been really relaxed around you. Eventually the kid goes, “Whatever. If you’re too pathetic to figure it out on your own, I guess it’s my civic fucking duty not to abandon you in the miserable throes of mid-game stagnation.” He closes his husktop again, but captchalogues it this time. “Give it here.”

His rudeness doesn’t faze you as you hand the little device over. It looks much bigger, clunkier in his hands. His fingers are thin and spidery.

— urgh. You really don’t want to think of spiders, though.

The way his knobby knuckles look on the buttons compared to yours, that’s still kind of nice though.

He absolutely schools you in stage five, beating it in less than ten minutes. It only takes him that long because you won’t stop talking about all the different shit you tried and what wrong decisions you made here and there, which compels him to tell you what a shitpan you were for even considering something that utterly stupid to be the solution and explain, at length, what the right answer was and how obvious it is to people whose minds aren’t made of tar.

You decide you like him, and halfway through his narration of stage six, you give in and ask his name. “Hey, I know this was supposed to be anonymous and all, but what should I call you?”  
  
The only reason he knows your last name is because you were stupid enough to include it in your initial forum post, the idiocy of which he was more than content to describe to you in detail before eventually saying that he was interested in your proposal. He’s really lucky you even _read_ the whole thing instead of deleting it immediately.

He looks like he might be considering punching you in the face and taking off with your game, but instead he begrudgingly mumbles, “My last name is Vantas. If you tell me your first name I’ll give you mine, but other than that you can fuck right off and deal with it.”

Beaming, you say, “good enough for me!” and let him go back to his dissertation.

You get all the way to stage nine before he grumbles that he hates this level and shoves the palmhusk back at you, retrieving his husktop and saying that you’re on your own for now. The two of you lapse into silence as Vantas resumes his angry typing and you poke distractedly at the game, losing badly almost immediately, without his help. You switch the puzzle game for the racing one, and occupy yourself contentedly for about an hour before you feel something stabbing into your side.

Vantas’ shoes are resting against your thigh. He’s passed out, curled against the arm of the couch, and his husktop is dangerously close to falling on the floor. You carefully close it and set it a little ways away, where it should be safe for now, and give his shoulder a little shake. “Hey,” you say quietly, smiling. “Need help getting to your recupera-coon?”

He shoves you away, rough and clumsy. “Fuck off,” he says, “I don’t need your help.” He lets you steady him when he wobbles to his feet, though.

After he’s shuffled off, you stretch out on the couch, captchaloguing your palmhusk and taking to staring at the ceiling instead of a tiny screen. You look forward to going home and putting this all behind you, but you ruminate on a new agenda floating around in the back of your sponge. That is, part of you hopes that you and Vantas might actually be able to become friends through this.

It’s the least you can do for someone who is, one way or another, helping you fill a pail.

* * *

Three days after you get back home, still very much alive, you message him on Trollian.

CG: WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT.  
EB: hehe, nothing much!! just wondering how you were doing.  
CG: GREAT. FANTASTIC. WHY DO YOU CARE.  
EB: why would i not care?  
EB: you’re pretty cool, actually!  
CG: WOW. I’M FLATTERED. DO YOU HEAR THAT SOUND? THAT’S THE HOPELESS NOISE PRODUCED BY MY WINDSACKS AS I SCREAM MY WAY INTO AN EARLY GRAVE, ONE THAT WILL UNDOUBTEDLY BE LOVINGLY ADORNED WITH THE PHRASE “HE WAS PRETTY COOL, ACTUALLY.” HORDES OF HOT, GRIEVING HIGHBLOODS WILL PROSTRATE THEMSELVES BEFORE THIS TRAGIC HEADSTONE, INCONSOLABLE OVER THE LOSS OF SUCH A TOLERABLY COOL GUY. ALL OF ALTERNIA WILL MOURN OVER THE LOSS OF SUCH A PERSON, SOMEONE SO ENTRENCHED IN MEDIOCRITY THAT HE EFFORTLESSLY ACHIEVED THE SCOUT’S BADGE OF “ALRIGHT, I GUESS” JUST BY ENTERING THE ROOM. THE EMPRESS HERSELF WILL WEEP A SINGLE TYRIAN TEAR AT THE THOUGHT THAT HER RANKS JUST GOT A SMALL AMOUNT LESS BLANDLY ACCEPTABLE.  
EB: wow.  
CG: FUCK YOU, WOW.  
CG: THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A ONE TIME THING.  
EB: it was!  
EB: i just thought we could maybe be friends?  
CG: …  
CG: WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU WANT TO BE FRIENDS.  
EB: um, i don’t know? it couldn’t be because i like you. that would be totally unanticipated and way too easy of an answer, besides! ]:B  
CG: ALREADY I CAN’T FUCKING STAND YOU.  
EB: ]:D?  
CG: UGH.  
CG: I CAN’T EVEN CARE ANYMORE AT THIS POINT. I’M GOING TO PRACTISE SOME CODING. HAVE FUN BEING WEIRDLY FRIENDLY, I GUESS.  
EB: talk to you later??  
CG: YEAH, SURE. WHATEVER.

* * *

Harley invites you over a few months later, and on your way to the greenblood’s hive you notice that its location is actually pretty close to Vantas’. You have a lot of fun with Harley—you’ve been talking online for ages, but this is the first time you’ve ever seen her in person. Her hive is on this tiny little overgrown island in the middle of a huge lake, and to get to it, she tells you you have to swim.

Of course it’s a lake, not the ocean, but the thought still seriously freaks you out until she tells you that her lusus keeps the lake very, very safe, and will watch you as you swim over! She ends up swimming out to meet you when you get halfway there, anyway, and tries her best to push your head under the water.

You stay with her a week longer than planned because she’s just so great, but you think your lusus will probably miss you if you stay away much longer, so you promise you’ll come visit again. Just before you get into the water to swim your way back, she tells you that she had a boat all along, and offers to row you back to shore. You flip it on purpose a few meters away from your destination, just to get her all wet, and then bolt away laughing while she giggles and curses you at the top of her lungs.

It kind of makes you nostalgic for another profanity-spewing troll you know, although he’s far less jovial about it than Harley is. You are not deterred! You follow the coordinates to his hive and are glad you were able to get there before the morning started getting hot. Luckily, Vantas usually stays up pretty late; he rarely left his spot beside you on the couch until the thick red window coverings were aglow with the sun’s glare.

You don’t think anything of it when you raise your fist to cheerfully rap at the front door, don’t think anything until the door bursts open and you’re face-to-face with a hissing crab monster.

Holy _shit_.

“Wait, wait, shit,” you say, stumbling backwards from the massive clacking pinchers. “I’m not here to— don’t you remember me? I just wanted to say hi, I promise, but I don’t have to stay, I can leave right now, just watch me!” Now that you’re rethinking it, maybe showing up at a lowblood’s hive unannounced was a terrible idea.

Oh god, this crab thing is going to cut your arms off.

And then it’s probably going to kill you.

You’re hovering nervously over your strife specibus, trying to really figure out if you can kill someone’s lusus, when you hear a loud, caustic, “ _HEY!_ ” The crab freezes, and you should probably take the opportunity to run, but your survival instinct is shit so instead you turn with him toward the source of the noise.

Vantas is standing in boxers and a giant sweater, hair a wild snarl above his ears and massive bags under his eyes. He is holding the most adorably substandard sickle you’ve ever seen, which he uses to wave at you in the least threatening way possible. Mostly it’s just angry emphatic gesturing with a sharp thing, which would be dangerous except you’re pretty sure that sickle wouldn’t cut through butter without some difficulty. “What the fuck do you assholes think you’re doing? Get your wretched amalgamations of flesh and chitin inside before the sun lifts higher and turns you into delicious toasted snacks for the daybeasts.” He turns to stomp back inside, and you hear him mumble “fuckin’ idiots” under his breath.

His lusus watches you and hisses the entire time it takes you to walk to the entrance of the hive and duck in. It doesn’t try anything else, though, just stands there and makes displeased cheesegrater noises until you disappear.

By the time you find Vantas he’s wearing pants and shoes again, glaring at you defensively. “What the hell do you want? Did the drones send the slurry back because it soured due to intimate contact with my repulsive fluids?”  
  
“Um, no,” you say, scratching behind the arm of your glasses. “That’d be pretty weird, if that happened.”

“Then why.”

Part of you wants to smile, but the other part isn’t sure you made the right call here. Maybe he’s way more defensive than you thought he was. Maybe he doesn’t actually want to be friends. You thought your Trollian chats had been going pretty well… “I was in the area and I just wanted to say hi?” you guess.

He’s very quiet, steeping in this intense furious silence as he sizes you up. He’s about a foot shorter than you, and his arm at the widest point is only about even with the diameter of your wrist, so there’s a lot of you for him to size up. “...did you bring that game?” he asks, really obviously trying not to sound hopeful.

“Not today,” you say, and before he can look disappointed and kick you out (which you hope he wouldn’t do anyway, but) you go on to offer, “But maybe next time I can bring it?”

Next time.

Vantas visibly considers it. “You’re way too fucking friendly,” he eventually says, and storms off toward the recreation block. You grin and follow him.

* * *

He lets you tag along into his room when he goes to fetch some game grubs for his console, explaining that, like a normal fucking person, he keeps them all locked up in a tank to keep them safe. Vantas opens the doors to a big cupboard in the wall which does in fact host a large glass box full of multicoloured grubs, but you’re focusing more on the posters plastering every inch of his walls.

“Is that Troll Liv Tyler?” you ask excitedly, squinting up at the poster.  
  
“Uh, yeah,” Vantas says, turning away from the grub tank. “She was amazing in the masterpiece film Troll Jersey Girl with Troll Ben Affleck.”

“Is that the one In Which Two Trolls of Similar Social Standing, After One Of Which Lost Favour In The Eyes Of The Glorious Empress, Come Together To Help The Higher Blooded Troll (Played by Troll Ben Affleck) Recover From Losing His Fated Flushedmate, Discovering After Several Comical Misunderstandings That His Romantic Interest (Played by Troll Liv Tyler) Was In Fact His Fated Heart All Along, Leading Him To Choose Her Over A Chance At High Ranking Position In The Army, To The Disgust Of Every Empress-Fearing Troll In The Galaxy, Until It Turns Out To Be A Moderately Hilarious Deception And The Lovers Enlist Together, Swearing To Serve Allegiance To Her Imperial Condescension And Leaving Any Irrelevant Side Characters Behind, Including The Higher Blood’s Unusually Young Moirail And Elderly Lusus?”

“Yeah,” he says.

You make a face. “Dude, Troll Liv Tyler has been in _way_ better movies than that!”

Vantas’ face scrunches. “Like what.”

“Like Armageddon!”  
  
“You realize there are probably a minimum of two thousand movies in troll cinema that feature the word ‘Armageddon’ in them?”  
  
You make a ‘pfffft’ sound, saying, “I’m talking about the only one that _matters_. The one with Troll Bruce Willis, of course! Troll Ben Affleck is in that one too, so I bet you’d like it.”

“Wait, you’re referring to In Which The Brilliant And Glorious Empress Comes Up With An Intelligent And Scientifically Viable Plan To Save The Planet From A Wayward Asteroid, Hand-picking A Worthy Team From The Best Selection Available, Who Subsequently—”  
  
“Yes,” you say, “That one.”

The contemplative scrunch turns into an outright scowl, startling you a bit. “Oh my God,” Vantas groans, sounding actively pained. “I _cannot_ fucking _believe_ I filled a pail with the likes of you!” You wish he’d stop bringing that part up, kind of. “Armageddon In Which The Brilliant and Glorious Empress Comes Up With An Intelligent And Scientifically Viable Plan To Save The Planet From A Wayward Asteroid is a _remake_ of a far superior film, where the person who came up with the plan was actually a determined brownblood who learned about astrophysics studying his indigo moirail’s schoolfeeds, giving him the resources to use his superior intellect to solve the conundrum where no one of a higher bloodrank could! It was privately produced and became a cult classic on the internet, before the director, writer, and all of the actors were culled so that it could be re-written with proper due to the Empress’ bulbous gluteal muscles!”

“What? No way!”  
  
“I’ll prove it to you,” he argues, turning back to the cabinet, his game grubs long forgotten. He digs through a shelf full of countless bootlegged video discs, finally selecting one. “This is the original Armageddon, you fuck. Get in my recreation block for some fucking education before I have my dad kick you out of my hive to die in the sun.”

You argue throughout the entire movie, but it turns out to be pretty good. You still don’t think it’s better than the one with Troll Liv Tyler, but you can appreciate the original vision. Vantas returns to his block for another movie, only to find that he left the grub tank open and they somehow managed to create a ladder with their own bodies that they used to scale the side of the glass and escape all around the room. By the time you’ve finished scrambling around trying to collect them all without killing them, the sun is at its zenith and he suggests that you sleep.

You’re halfway to the door when he dumps a bunch of shit out of his sylladex and kicks them into a loose ring on the floor. “You can sleep here,” he offers, staring at the ground between his feet.

Harley had a spare recuperacoon that you slept in, so you should be able to go without your own slime (prescription strength, specifically designed for indigos and purples) for a few more days. Usually you’d be a little nervous about sleeping in a room with someone who looks so breakable—what if he startled you and you woke up and— But you shake it off, smiling a little crookedly as you nod. “Yeah, alright. Thanks.”

* * *

The next time you visit him is half a sweep later. Your time planetside is waning, but you’re dreading it more than anything else. Your best bro will go up one season before you, but you already have plans to apply for positions on the same ship. (If that doesn’t work, your weird-but-cool friend Lalond suggested pretending to be moirails. Highbloods have a very high approval rating for conciliatory transfers; usually the Empire doesn’t give a shit about how much distance there is between you and a quadrant until it’s time for concupiscent leave, but nobody wants a pissy highblood killing half the fleet because there’s no one around to pap them. You wouldn’t have thought of it yourself, but Lalond gets this sick little joy out of twisting rules like that.)

You try not to talk about it much, but Vantas brought it up a couple weeks ago. The two of you talk almost every day now, to the point where it feels really weird when you don’t hear from him.

When he asks if he can see you one more time before you get conscripted, your bloodpusher does this funny little tap-dance in your chest, one that you can’t really put a name to.

CG: I MEAN IT’S OKAY IF YOU DON’T WANT TO COME. I UNDERSTAND.  
CG: IT’S PRETTY FAR AWAY AND A BIG FUCKING HASSLE TOO. I WOULDN’T GO THROUGH ALL THAT BULLSHIT JUST FOR SOME ASSHOLE, TO BE COMPLETELY FUCKING HONEST, SO I WOULDN’T BLAME YOU IF YOU’D RATHER STICK YOUR BULGE INTO DEVOURING RANGE OF GL’BGOLYB’S MASSIVE BEAK WHILE TELLING HER YOU FUCKED THE EMPRESS AND DIDN’T CALL BACK THAN DEAL WITH PACKING ALL YOUR SHIT AND HAVING TO WASTE MONEY ON TRANSPORT DROIDS AND  
CG: YOU KNOW WHAT, NEVERMIND. IT WAS A STUPID QUESTION TO ASK ANYWAY. JUST GO ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS PRETENDING I NEVER SAID ANYTHING.  
CG: JUST LEAVE IT. DON’T EVEN BOTHER REACTING. IT’S LIKE WHEN YOU’RE AT A FANCY HIGHBLOOD PARTY AND SOMEONE’S LUSUS TAKES A SHIT ON THE DANCE FLOOR BUT EVERYONE TRIES NOT TO MENTION IT WHILE THE HUMILIATED GRUB CLEANS IT UP. OR WHEN SOMEONE HAS A NASTY GROWTH ON THEIR FACE BUT THEY’RE ALSO REALLY DANGEROUS SO IT’S LIKE THIS BIG FUCKING HORRIFIED CULT HAVING TO WORK EVERY DAY NOT TO SAY ANYTHING ABOUT IT.  
CG: AND YOU EVENTUALLY GO OUT OF YOUR WAY TO AVOID THEM BECAUSE EVEN IF THEY’RE A PRETTY OKAY PERSON THE EFFORT IT TAKES TO NOT MENTION IT OR EVEN LET THEM CATCH ON THAT YOU’RE STARING AT IT BECOMES TOO MUCH AND IT HAUNTS YOU AND KEEPS YOU AWAKE AT NIGHT, BUT ONE NIGHT SOMEONE FEELS BAD FOR THIS DEFORMED DOUCHE AND INVITES THEM TO A PARTY AND EVERYONE JUST STARES QUIETLY INTO THEIR DRINKS PRETENDING NOTHING IS HAPPENING THE WHOLE TIME.  
CG: JUST PRETEND THAT I AM THAT GUY AND EVERYTHING I JUST SAID IS A HIDEOUSLY VISIBLE GROWTH RIGHT ON MY CARTILAGE NUB AND EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY.  
EB: oh my god vantas, i just walked away to get a grubwich!  
EB: of course i’d like to come visit you!!  
CG: I MEAN LET’S FACE IT I’M ALWAYS GOING TO PUT PEOPLE IN THESE HUMILIATING SITUATIONS THAT ARE UNCOMFORTABLE AND EMBARRASSING FOR EVERYONE AND THE BEST THING TO DO ABOUT THEM IS TO JUST LEAVE IT TO AWKWARDLY HOVER LIKE THE POLKA DOTTED TRUNKBEAST USING YOUR LOAD GAPER AT FOUR IN THE  
CG: OH.  
EB: ]:D

He was a nervous wreck for the ensuing perigee, going on and on and on about this and that and the other, hemming and hawing and insisting that you didn’t have to do it if you didn’t want to. It got kind of weird, really, but you didn’t make too big of a deal out of it. Vantas was always kind of high strung.

You pack just about everything, because you’re getting ready to leave the planet anyway and might as well. You empty all the dumb crap out of your sylladex and buy a few more cards to give you extra space, because the plan this time is for you to stay a while—or at least, until Vantas gets sick of you and kicks you out! You bring your recuperacoon and your entire computer rig, even planning on taking your lusus along so he doesn’t get lonely without you. Vantas already said he’d prepare the spare block (internal shudder) for him to stay in.

It kind of sucks that the excitement for this visit is tainted by the gnawing knowledge that this is the equivalent of your last wigglerhood fling before adulthood rears its ugly, post-molt head.

CG: GOD, I’M SUCH AN ASS, I DIDN’T EVEN ASK HOW YOU WERE GETTING HERE. DO THE TRANSPORT DROIDS EVEN ACCOMMODATE LUSII? OH FUCK, IT’S PROBABLY REALLY EXPENSIVE.  
CG: SHIT, OKAY. I DON’T SPEND A LOT OF MY ALLOWANCE SO I CAN PROBABLY CHIP IN FOR THE TRANSPORT FEES.  
CG: I’M SO STUPID I CAN’T BELIEVE I WAS ENOUGH OF A BULGEHEAD THAT I DIDN’T THINK OF THIS BEFORE.  
EB: um, vantas!  
CG: WHAT.  
EB: that won’t really be necessary.  
CG: LOOK I GET THAT YOU’RE ALL WEIRDLY NOBLE AND STUFF BUT I FUCKING INSIST THAT YOU LET ME HELP PAY FOR SOMETHING THAT I ASKED FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE AND I WILL PAY YOU BACK IF I HAVE TO STUFF A SOCK FULL OF CAEGARS DOWN YOUR FUCKING WIND TUNNEL.  
EB: my lusus can fly, actually!  
CG: …  
EB: so we’ll just be traveling alone.  
CG: SURE. OKAY.  
CG: COOL.  
CG: JUST WALTZ ON IN HERE WITH YOUR FUCKING RADICAL FLYING LUSUS.  
CG: I GET IT.  
CG: WHATEVER.  
EB: um.  
EB: are you actually mad?  
CG: OF COURSE I’M NOT FUCKING MAD WHERE WOULD YOU GET THE IMPRESSION THAT I’M MAD?  
CG: I’M JUST COMPLETELY UNIMPRESSED WITH YOUR FANCY FLYING LUSUS HORSESHIT.  
EB: aw, you don’t have to be jealous! your dad is pretty great too.  
EB: in a weird, shrieking bottomfeeder kind of way. do regular crabs even make noises?  
CG: DON’T FUCKING TALK ABOUT MY LUSUS LIKE THAT.  
EB: like what?  
CG: I AM SO APPALLED THAT YOU ACTUALLY NEED TO ASK THAT QUESTION THAT INSTEAD OF TRYING TO ANSWER I’M JUST GOING TO GO DUNK MY HEAD IN A VAT OF ACID UNTIL IT WEARS THROUGH MY CRANIAL DOME AND THE ALREADY LIQUID CONTENTS OF MY THINKPAN CAN MELT AWAY TO NOTHING LIKE THEY’VE BEEN TRYING TO DO FOR YEARS.  
EB: haha, whatever you say.  
CG: FUCK OFF.  


You bring all the games for your palmhusk, because you are secretly planning on giving it to him before you go. You’re pretty excited about that, even if you know Stridr might get pissy when he finds out. Neither you nor your best bro are going to need videogames up in space and besides that you kind of like the idea of Vantas having something to remember you by.

Your lusii sit outside and make wary noises at each other, like you’d expect from a bipedal crab and a giant moth. Neither of them seem super hyped about the situation, but they also don’t seem ready to kill each other (which is good, because while mothdad was an excellent caretaker and is also way stronger than he looks, you don’t think he could put up much of a fight against those pinchers) so you let Karkat grab your sleeve and haul you upstairs. You get your recuperacoon set up next to his, after he moves some shit out of the way, and then set up your computer in the recreational block.

The very moment you’re done, he hauls you back down on the couch and all but punches the palmhusk out of your sylladex. Neither of you move until you’ve beaten Fjoris, with you doing most of the input while Vantas sits with his arm pressed against your side, looking over your shoulder and telling you what to do.

It’s kind of weird how you… don’t really mind touching him. He’s really warm compared to you, warmer than Stridr even. He hasn’t gotten close enough to be suffocating, so you just feel soothed.

After you finish Fjoris you put in another game—a grub so deep purple it’s almost black—and explain that it’s some surrealist indie game that Lalond got you. She claimed it was bioengineered at home by one of her creepy cult friends, so it’s not as old as some of the other games, but the grub is compatible, and it’s turned out to be one of your favourite things to play. It has a few different paths and you’ve played most of them, but there are still a few you haven’t gotten to yet.

Vantas stays resting against you while you operate the little white figure around the screen, fighting weird tentacled monsters and jumping into swirling pits of blue-purple pixels, avoiding little deadly triangles and answering weird philosophical questions between stages. At some point, his shaggy head drops against your bicep and he stays that way, silently watching until you turn off the game and explain you’re tired from travel.

A check-up on your lusii reveals that crabdad has already invited your dad in and is now using some kind of crab interpretive dance to tell mothdad what are no doubt some truly humiliating stories about what Vantas was like as a grub. They seem to understand each other better than crabdad understood your frantic stuttering, which you take to mean that you and Vantas should be wary of the potential forming of some kind of Helpful Dad coalition, both members equally determined to meddle in affairs where the presence of giant arthropods is not actually needed.

“Hey,” you say, giving a polite-but-pointless knock on the side of the door frame. “We’re going to sleep! Don’t do anything crazy or embarrassing while I’m knocked out.” The worst your dad usually does is maintain an indiscriminate attitude about what he eats, so your warning is mostly for show. The two of you joke around like that all the time. Your dad is pretty hilarious when he isn’t being really bothersome.

Mothdad flicks his wings at you, feelers wiggling in some combination of “goodnight” and “yes, please leave so I can get back to my conversation.”

“I think we made a huge mistake!” you chuckle as you walk into Vantas’ block.

He tilts his head at you, blinking curiously. “With what? Did you slip and fall into the load gaper again? Because you’re cleaning up any fucking mess you make, I hope you know.”

“Ewww! You’re so gross,” you tell him. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure our dads are _conspiring_.”

Vantas wrinkles his nose. “Conspiring about _what?_ ”  
  
“I dunno, how to horribly embarrass us, probably.”  
  
“Around _who?_ All the people who hang out in my hive?”

You pause, thinking about it. “Okay, that’s a good point! But I still think they’re getting along too well. You’d better watch your back; my dad’s tricksy. He might give yours some weird ideas.”

A scoff. “Like what?”

“I don’t know, man, I’m not the one who’s an expert on how your dad thinks!”  
  
“He’s a crab, he doesn’t _think_. He just kinda does stuff.”

“Whatever,” you say, and pull your shirt off, then drape it over the arm of Vantas’ computer chair. When you draw back, he’s looking at you like you might be something he stepped in. You tilt your head as colour rises in his cheeks. “Is there something on my face?” you ask.

“No,” he says, jerking his head away from you. A moment later, you catch him looking in your direction once more, through his eyelashes. You see this because you haven’t looked away from _him_.

“What’s up, then?”  
  
“God, Egbert,” he growls, turning on you. The flush is pronounced, enhanced by his snarl. He jabs a finger at your chest. “Why does everything always have to have a reason with you? Nothing’s up! I never said anything was up.”

“I don’t think—” you say, still watching him.

“Shut up,” Vantas says, and yanks off his sweater. He’s not looking at you anymore, so he doesn’t notice that you watch him take off two more shirts—a t-shirt and, under that, a thin tank top—and kick off his shoes before he starts fiddling with the front of his jeans. You glance away, then, shucking off your own pants. When your head lifts again, Vantas is unhooking a crumpled set of undershorts from his ankle.

“Um,” you say.

“ _What?_ ” he snaps. “God, you’re so weird tonight.”  
  
You don’t think you’ve been weird tonight at all. Things seemed to be going fine until you took off your shirt, and he got all huffy and weird and red. Vantas projects, though. You guess this is projection, but you probably shouldn’t point that out. Instead, you just ask, “You sleep naked?”  
  
He blinks at you, clicking in the back of his throat. It’s like a motor starting, as if he was preparing to scream but got taken aback and now he needs to recover. He clicks at you a few more times until one stops halfway through and kind of squeaks down into a burbling series of pops and he just shrugs and says, “Yes?”

“Oh.”

Vantas looks directly at your clothed crotch and you feel a little weird about it but not as much as you might if you weren’t talking about being naked. “You don’t,” he wonders, stating it more than asking.

“I don’t really like being naked?” The unsureness of your tone makes up for the definitive quality of his. You’re pretty sure this is not how conversations are supposed to go. You’re pretty sure you aren’t supposed to find Vantas’ blotchy red face oddly compelling.

“Whatever,” is all he says, but you notice his shoulders shrink and he tightens his thighs as he shuffles his way to his recuperacoon. You feel like you’ve inadvertently insulted him, and you want to apologize but he’s scaling the side and you look away before you can get an eyeful of his nook when he swings his leg over the lip and crawls in. Vantas submerges completely before surfacing with a sigh, letting his head loll against the edge of the ‘coon. He uses a slimy hand to smear yet more slime out of his face, then turns to wrinkle his brow at you. “Get the fuck in, you panrotten dolt,” he says. “We don’t have all day.”

The slime sucks your boxers to your legs when you climb in, as usual, but you don’t mind the feeling. You prefer it to being exposed. The strength which you take your sopor is pretty intense, so you don’t dunk yourself all the way because you’ll be out in minutes. Instead you slink down, to your chest, then hook your arms over the lip of the ‘coon and look over at Vantas, making a thoughtful noise. “What do you want to do tomorrow?”  
  
“Play more videogames? Watch movies? I don’t fucking know,” he says.

You laugh. “Aw, come on! There has to be something fun to do around here. When I was at Harley’s we went swimming at night in the lake around her house—her lusus is some crazy mutant barkbeast who killed everything in it that might want to eat a troll, so it’s safe. I hadn’t swam in a long time before that, because my hivestem is closest to the ocean, which I couldn’t swim in for obvious reasons. My dad used to take me to this pond when I was only a few sweeps old, but someone built their hive right next to it and the carpenter droids cut down most of the trees around it, so it dried up.”

He listens to your story with droopy eyes. The skin contact with your slime is making you a little fuzzy, as well, but you try to force yourself to stay awake a little longer.

“There’s nowhere to swim around here,” he says.

“We could—” you start to say, but you’re interrupted by a growl. Then again, interrupted is a strong word. More like, you stop politely when Vantas starts growling, but could easily talk over it because it’s just a little purrgrub sound, barely audible.

It’s obvious he’s trying to be angry and failing. You fill in the blanks for him. “If you want to go do stuff with Harley, go to _her_ hive. I don’t go outside.”

“But outside is really cool,” you protest, voice turning down to a mumble as you slowly sink lower into your slime. A hollow _thunk_ echoes around you as you slip past the opening, hitting your forehead on the wall above the surface of the sopor.

“I don’t give a,” Vantas says, and then there’s a soft sucking sound as he slides fully into the barrel of the ‘coon.

You lean back and don’t bother responding.

* * *

The next night, you marathon the extended versions of all six films in The Empress of the Dark Magical Metal Bands series. Vantas explains that it was supposed to be three movies, since there were three books, but a highblood fan of the original literature found out about the project before it started filming and threatened to cull the director if he left anything out. They had to write out the four tiny rustbloods from the story and replace them with actors from a higher bloodcaste because after all the highblood’s edits to the script, they were worried that some of the rusts might die before the series was finished.

In the end the production exceeded its budget by three times and accrued enough footage to fill eight movies, which was then shuffled into six two and a half hour long sections, all of which had to be cut down for the theatrical release anyway because Alternian theatres have _very specific_ rules about the length limits of the films they screen. Vantas insisted that the proper way to consume this particular work of fiction was to watch each one back-to-back with minimal breaks, because due to the extra long script, the movies don’t have particularly cinematic beginnings and ends to them; they just sort of stop at a semi-convenient place and then start up in the next film with little-to-no prelude. You kind of get the point without him lecturing you on it for ten minutes, but that doesn’t mean that by the end of the fifteen-hour trial you don’t end up collapsed next to Vantas on the couch, too exhausted to even go back to your ‘coons.

You wake up to moonlight (one of your lusii must have opened the curtains) in a puddle of warm Vantas limbs. One of your lusii also draped a sheet over the both of your bodies. His knees are jammed under your back, and he is prostrated face-first over your chest, furiously clinging to one of your arms.

It’s really funny and cute. You’d push him off the couch, just to see him squawk, if he was in any position to fall. You wonder how he’s comfortable sleeping like that.

Eventually your back starts to hurt and you find one of his grubscars and tickle beneath it through his shirt until he wakes up screaming and flails so hard that _you_ end up being the one who falls off the couch, getting hopelessly tangled with the sheet in the process.

The night after that, Vantas walks under a slightly ajar hiveportal and a bag of powdered wheat product falls off the top of the door and covers him in ghostly white. Through your own gasps of hysterical laughter you hear loud screeing from the other room, which you interpret as crabdad's version of delighted giggles. Mothdad works faster than you thought.

“I told you so,” you chortle, arms wrapped around your thorax as you struggle to stay upright.

“Shut the fuck up,” Vantas hisses, fluffing huge clouds of flour out of his hair.

Several nights later, you walk into the nutrition block and say, “Hey Vantas, what are you making?” and he replies:

“Karkat.”

“What?”

He doesn't look at you as he vigorously stirs the metal pot atop the meal incinerator, voice growling a little as he clarifies, “My name's Karkat.”

You blink behind your glasses, and then smile. “Oh! Oh, yeah!” You'd honestly kind of forgotten that you didn't know his first name. It felt cool to be calling each other by last names, so you never thought to do anything about it. “My name's Johnne,” you say.

Vantas—Karkat, you mean!—pauses to think about that. “How do you spell that, even?”

“J-O-H-N-N-E,” you say, and he gives you another one of his _looks_ , this time a special variety of 'are you fucking kidding me.'

“That's so lazy,” he says. “Three of those letters aren't even necessary to make that sound!”

“I know!” you say, “It used to be just J-O-N but when I got older I realized that that wasn't the right amount of letters and had to improvise! But, hey, it's not like my lusus can make _sounds_ , give him a break.”

Karkat twists his mouth up and gives the pot a judicious stir. “Does that mean you speak Alternian Sign Language?” he asks, like the thought just occurred to him.

“Umm, I don't know, maybe if it's spoken by _moths_.” Karkat flicks the spoon at you, spraying you with hot flecks of whatever-the-fuck-he's-cooking. “Hey! It's not my fault you have stupid dumb questions,” you say.

“I'm going to drown you in this,” he says vengefully.

He probably would have, too, because you spend a few seconds making further fun of him before your lusii burst into the nutrition block. Mothdad ushers you both out of the immediate area while crabdad takes over tending to the meal. Afterward, they still make you clean up.

* * *

A blanket stretches over both your shoulders and you're sitting outside on one of Karkat's landing slats, looking at the moons.

Well, theoretically you're looking at the moons. In reality you're both staring intently at your palmhusk, which you're trading back and forth as you work your way through a bootlegged two-player logic game. It's buggy as hell but Karkat apparently spent ages looking for a version compatible with your palmhusk, so you don't really mind indulging him. He's way better at it than you are, but you kick his ass at every racing game he has, so you think it's fair.

You finish answering a list of trivia questions (mostly incorrectly) and pass off the device to Karkat, seeing the screen flick to a maze puzzle. He's beating you by seven points, so even if he fucks this one up you're not going to be that much better off.

You decide to actually get in some of that moonwatching you came out here to do, despite the fact that you popped your handheld out of your sylladex five minutes in.

The sky looks different here, but you couldn't really find the words to express how. Artistic mamby pamby shit is Lalond's deal. All you know is that the different celestial patterns are kind of cool, and when you turn back to check on Karkat, you find you like the way the two moons illuminate his features. His eyes are scrunched at the corners and his lips pressed tight, nose wrinkled on one side as his entire focus draws down toward the game in his hands. You watch his twitching eyelids, crests of their ridiculously long lashes shivering with every motion, and the way he twists his face to sniff like something's irritating his nose. You watch until he lets out a soft _hah_ of triumph, but before he can hand the game back to you, the palmhusk screen blinks twice, and then blacks out.

“Fuck!”

“Aw, shit, I forgot to charge it yesterday,” you say guiltily, waiting for him to bomb you with incomprehensible rage.

Karkat instead tosses the palmhusk into your lap, huffing dismissively. “Whatever. I was kicking your ass anyway.”

“We can play again later,” you say generously.

“Yeah,” he agrees, then stretches out to rest his horns against the hard surface of his hive.

You hardly notice when his weight shifts from leaning against the wall to leaning against your side; your arms were already touching, so you didn't think much about the added pressure until Karkat shifted, tucking his head against your shoulder. It doesn't bother you, though. You like how warm he is. It's pretty cold out, even for you.

His hand touches yours underneath the blanket. You don't question it. “We should go to Harley's,” you say. “I think you'd like her a lot, and if we both rode on mothdad we could get there in one night and then come back the next.”

“Alright,” Karkat agrees, distant like he isn't really listening. You didn't really get much sleep last morning, because you were up arguing about movies again.

You want to say something else, but Karkat tucks his knees against the side of your leg and curls against you, fingers slipping beneath yours with the gesture. You carefully navigate his horn when you tilt your head to rest your cheek against his hair. You think he falls asleep for a while, but you don't bother to check.

* * *

Karkat's already in his recuperacoon, leaning out over the mouth, and you're in your underwear standing between the two 'coons, propped against yours. “I don't know what you see in those weird quadrant movies,” you're saying. “I don't mind when the dashing hero falls in love with a beautiful damsel during his adventures, but the focus on it feels so voyeuristic. Everything about these romance movies is boring and lame and unnecessary. Real pity shouldn't be complicated! It should be easy, like being someone's best friend and just kind of liking them as a person.”

He reaches out of the slime, grabs you by the face, hauls you forward and kisses you.

There's sopor on your cheeks when he jerks back, eyes wide and alarmed and much more red than they were when you first met, still this weirdly vivid shade that you didn't see in Stridr's eyes. Karkat lets out a sound that that Lalond might describe as an 'undignified wail' and slithers over the lip of the 'coon and plunges beneath the surface of the slime.

“Karkat!” you shout, cheeks bright blue and cold, riddled with confusion. “Karkat?” The slime ripples, but your friend doesn't appear.

You shake the recuperacoon, calling his name a few more times, but he doesn't emerge. You reach a hand in to try to grab him and haul him out—he's small, and you're ridiculously strong, you can pull up his weight easily.

Or at least you _could_ if he didn't seize your hand from within the slime and _bite you_.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” you yelp, snatching your hand away. There's no blood, his teeth are way too nubby and stupid for it, but he got you on the side of your palm where your hand is plush and soft and sensitive and it _hurt_. You consider tipping the recuperacoon over and dumping him out, but both of your lusii would probably scream at you—crabdad’s screaming a little bit more literal than mothdad's angry feeler wiggles—so you do the only thing that makes sense from here: you swing your leg over the edge, and jump in alongside him.

Except you end up jumping on _top_ of him, and his displeased flailing knocks you off balance enough that you almost tip the 'coon over anyway. Karkat manages to throw himself against the opposite side, counterbalancing and keeping it from falling over. “What the fuck, you nebulous nook-sucking piss-stain!” he spits, sopor running in thick gobs down his face and clumping his eyelashes together.

“I should be asking you that!” you retort, stubbornly sinking down until your glutes are on the floor of the 'coon. You're tall enough that you can still frown at him above the surface if you keep your vertebral column straight. You'd like to see him try to get away from you now.

Karkat coils defensively at the other end of the ‘coon, perching on the tips of his toes so his face doesn't slip into the slime. “Get the absolute hell out of my recuperacoon,” he demands.

“You can't just say that,” you protest. “It's like you don't want to talk to me!”

“Wow, go figure,” he snaps.

“Karkat, I have something I need to tell you, but you have to promise you won't get upset.”

“No deal,” Karkat growls. “As you can see, I am already shitting _several bricks_ at the moment, and since you are currently in the same slime-filled tub with me I'd advise getting out before you get an unpleasant surprise.”

You don't know whether to laugh or gag, but you choke out, “That's disgusting! You're so gross, Karkat,” before you can regain your drive. “No, I'm serious though!”

“So am I.”

“You shouldn't be! You should calm down. I'm not mad at you or anything.”

“Believe it or not,” he grits out, “That's doing nothing to appease the violent shame currently strangling me from the inside out.”

“Don't feel that either!” You lift slimy hands in an appeasing gesture, and he shrinks back against the wall of the 'coon, paling. It makes you a little upset that he seems scared of touching you, but you try not to take it personally. “Look,” you say.

“Oh god,” he moans, covering his face.

“I'm really flattered that you think of me like that, but—”

“IF ANY GOD OUT THERE COULD PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY RIGHT NOW I WOULD SORELY FUCKING APPRECIATE IT.”

You can't hope to raise your voice above Karkat's, but the moment he pauses to take a breath you spit out, “But I'm not interested in that kind of stuff!”

“STRIKE ME DEAD, O VILE BEINGS.”

“ _Karkat!_ ”

His face is deadly serious and flushed bright red when he pulls his hand away. “I don't need your patronizing horseshit,” he informs you, voice low. “I know when I'm out of line and I know there wasn't the slightest chance of you ever wanting someone like me in that way and it was a stupid thing for me to do; I get it, _okay?_ I get it.”

“No, you don't get it,” you say, trying to find the midground between making your voice forceful but keeping it kind. “Why did you do that?” you ask, changing the trajectory of the conversation.

“Oh, _I don't know_ ,” Karkat says, deeply sarcastic. “Maybe because I'm a gross, disgusting, presumptuous lowblood fuck-up who wants to pail you.”

You want to tell him that none of those things are true—aside from the lowblood thing, maybe—but you don’t want to get derailed. Instead you just tell him, “I’m not interested in that with _anyone_ , not just you.”

For a second you think he’s going to start screaming again, but he pauses, forehead furrowing. “You what?”  
  
“I don’t want to pail _anyone_ ,” you repeat. Karkat’s mouth flaps open and closed like a dying fish. You crack a smile. “Why do you think we met the way we did?”  
  
He stops. Pauses. “I… kind of just assumed you were a boring loser who couldn’t get any.”

You choke out a sharp guffaw. “Thanks, buddy.”

“So…” he says slowly. “You don’t…”

“I don’t like anything that has to do with aroused genitals,” you clarify, being Very Extremely Specific. “It makes me really uncomfortable, actually!”  
  
You don’t mean anything by it, but Karkat’s face turns horrified. “Oh. Oh fuck. I’m so sorry, I—”  
  
“No, wait! You’re fine, you. Darn. Okay.” You wiggle, settling back against the swooping wall of the ‘coon. It isn’t the most comfortable—the walls are more curved than your own, so you can’t really get a good position without sliding down, but squirming a bit to the side gives you more support so you do that. Once you’re settled, you reach your arms out through the slime, beckoning to Karkat. “Come here.” He stares at you, disbelieving. “I’m serious, Karkat!” you insist, flapping your hands. “Come _here_.”

Finally, he stops looking like he’s expecting you to rip his head off and inches forward, cautiously at first, but when you get your fingers around his upper arm and tug he practically melts against you, burying his face in the crook of your neck. You only meant to give him a friendly hug to show that you aren’t repulsed by him, but that plan kind of backfires when you complete the hug and… Karkat fails to let go.

You think it over and decide it’s probably not that big of a deal. Sitting in your lap means he doesn’t have to strain to keep his head out of the sopor anyway. His slime is so weak compared to yours that you aren’t feeling tired at all, just relaxed and calm and really chill, for the circumstances.

It dawns on you that you’re holding a naked boy in your arms. It’s not something you ever thought about with anticipation, but under the current circumstances… it’s kind of okay? You’re not freaking out, anyway.

“So you really don’t like anyone,” he mumbles into your skin. He sounds like he’s pouting.

… He’s totally pouting. Heh. “I didn’t say that,” you say. “I like a lot of people.”  
  
“Not like _that_ , you dingus.”  
  
“Like what?”

“Like… I mean, like…”  
  
“There is too much like happening here, dude!”  
  
“Augh! Do you— _feel_ for people romantically?”

You give the arch of his green-stained scapula a questioning look. “I don’t know, really? I never thought about it.” You’re wary of hurting his feelings, but you think the best way to approach this situation is with honesty. While you know for sure that you do not want anyone’s goopy business on your goopy business, you never stopped to think about alternatives to that. At the time it didn’t seem important. Maybe your lack for foresight was ill advised, but there’s no changing it now.

“How do you just not think about something like that? Don’t you ever worry about quadrants?”  
  
Shrugging, you say, “I had a kismesis? She broke up with me before drone season. I don’t really want to talk about her, though,” you add before he can ask. You try to actually answer his question. “I worried about being killed by the drones.”

“That’s not the same,” Karkat snaps, lifting his head from your shoulder so he can glare at you. “Don’t you want anyone in your life who’s important? Don’t you ever get scared of being alone?”  
  
You tilt your head, smiling a small, quizzical smile. “I’m not alone, man. I have lots of friends.”

Karkat growls and slams his face down, forehead clunking against your shoulder. “Not what I _meant!_ ” he stresses, nails digging into the thick organic membrane on the ‘coon wall. “Friendship isn’t the same as a quadrant.”

“To me they aren’t all that different,” you admit.

He pauses, going silent for a long time. Too long, actually, and you wonder if the sopor’s finally put him to sleep before he mumbles, “So that’s it. Am I… just your friend?”  
  
Cautiously, you lift a hand to pat his back. “I don’t know,” you say. “Is that a good enough answer?” He doesn’t respond, so you guess it wasn’t. “I like you, Karkat,” you offer, trying to be helpful. You don’t have much more than that though.

Karkat winds his arms around your neck and squeezes tight, almost cutting off your air. You’re distracted by breathing, such that you almost miss it when he whispers fiercely, “I like you too, asshole.” You think you should probably go back to your own recuperacoon at some point, but you can’t for the life of you find the will to pull away from him.

* * *

He cries when you give him the palmhusk. You do it the night before you leave, so you won’t forget when you get up super early so you can start off as soon as the sun sets. You wrap him in a bearhug, feeling his bones creak under your thick arms, but it doesn’t make you loosen your grip any. He tells you that he’ll miss you, and that he’s sorry he’s such a nookwipe, and that he didn’t mean any of the times that he insulted you or your lusus, and says he’s really glad you came to visit, and before he can go on you crush him to your chest again, this time deliberately squeezing hard enough to take his breath away.

You assure him that you’ll still talk to him whenever you can. You even promise to send him the information about the ship you and Stridr are hoping to get placed on, saying that all he has to do is apply and if you’re there you’ll put in a good word for him and they’ll probably listen to you!  
  
Karkat doesn’t seem to think that’ll work, but he won’t tell you why. You promise this won’t be the last time you see each other. Karkat cries harder.

Eventually you get him calmed down and distracted, but you feel horrible for the rest of the night. When morning comes, you want to ask if he’d like you to sleep in his ‘coon again, but it seems like such a weird question that you shy away and climb into your recuperacoon before you can beat yourself up about it. You wake up alone and regretful anyway, but what’s done is done. You crawl into the cold open air and get washed off and dressed before Karkat wakes up.

When you finish packing and captchaloging everything, he’s still asleep. mothdad flicks his wings at you a couple times, letting you know that it’s time to go, but you wander back through the hall, stopping outside the hiveportal to his respite block.

“Karkat?” The door is closed, and you don’t hear movement inside. Still in his ‘coon, probably. You shuffle your feet, trying to convince yourself to go inside, but for some reason your hand won’t reach for the doorknob. “I’m sorry I can’t stay longer,” you tell the door as you shove your hands into your pockets. “I’m actually really sorry we didn’t meet each other sooner, though I guess it would have been a lot more awkward if we had, haha…” You clear your throat, because you still don’t like remembering that.

“You’re a really good friend, even if you don’t think you are. I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings when I didn’t really reciprocate your flushed feelings. I still don’t know the answer, but I know that I like you… not that that means anything anymore, at least for a while. But maybe we’ll end up on the same ship some day, and I’ll have it figured out by then? No matter what happens, I always want to be friends.”

Silence. Still asleep. You should go wake him up, so you can say goodbye.

“Bye, buddy. I’m going to miss you a lot. I hope it’s not too long before we can see each other again.” Mothdad buzzes his wings from around the corner, reminding you to hurry up. He doesn’t invade your space or try to force you, though. He’s a really good dad. “Okay, I have to go now,” you tell the door. “Later.”

You’re halfway down the hall when you hear a creak, and then footsteps. Before you can turn around, two dripping green arms slide under your armpits and wrap around your thorax, clinging tight. You can feel the blunt juts of two rounded horns pressing into your back. “You’re such a fuckface,” he says, his voice strangled. “I can’t believe you were just going to leave.”

You untangle one of his hands and thread your fingers through his, squeezing as you force out a laugh. “Sorry,” you say, not knowing how else to put it.

“I promise I’ll do everything I can to see you again,” he says, and he sounds like he’s addressing some impossible challenge. You don’t understand, but now isn’t the time to ask about it. You just nod. “You’re a stupid idiot dork and I hate your front teeth,” Karkat says.

“You’re one to talk about teeth,” you say, letting go of his hand so you can turn around. Fortunately, he’s wearing boxers, because even if you’ve technically been around him while he was naked before, that would still be really awkward. His wild hair is flattened against his forehead, slick with drying slime. You grin. “You should shower before the shit on your face dries and it gets stuck like that forever.”

“I still wouldn’t be as ugly as you,” he says.

You ruffle his gooey hair, smearing it back between his horns. “Tell crabdad you need a haircut,” you tell him, and then duck in to drop a clumsy but well-meant kiss on his brow. His eyes are wide and soulful and shiny when you draw back. Your smile gets a bit tighter, and your eyes reflexively drop down. You notice your front is now smeared with sopor slime. “Jeez, Karkat. Now I have to travel like this.” You pluck halfheartedly at your shirt.  
  
“Stuff it up your spongeclot,” he says, and then pushes up on his toes to press his lips against your cheek.

When he pulls away, he’s still on his toes and staring at you and his lips are trembling and you think you could kiss him, like for real, maybe not now but _some_ day, and then there’s an exasperated creak behind you followed by quiet clicking as crabdad slides around you and wraps a segmented arm around Karkat’s middle, gently hauling him back as he chitters consolingly.

Time to go.

“Goodbye!” you call back at them, while mothdad bumps his downy head against your hip. Karkat’s got his face buried in the hard carapace of his lusus’ thorax, but you see his small grey hand waving behind the large white pincher beckoning for you to keep walking.

The wind stings your eyes through your glasses when mothdad takes to the air, and anything going on there tear-wise is just a natural reaction to air pressure. “I had a lot of fun,” you tell your lusus as you lean down to ruffle your cheek at the fine fluff between his antennae. “And I know we’ll see each other eventually, so I won’t miss him too much. Not as much as I’m going to miss you,” you say, because as much of a pain as he is sometimes, leaving this big stupid moth behind is going to suck a lot. You wrap your arms around his bulk, clinging tight as he makes a lazy loop in the air. He doesn’t stop to say anything, but you know he’s proud of you.

You’re going to message Karkat as soon as you get back to your hive. You’ll talk to Lalond about figuring out how to get everyone in the same area, and she’s scary good at what she does, so you’re not afraid. Things will turn out just fine!

After all, your next genetic contribution will be _much_ easier if you have someone around who you already like a lot.


End file.
